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ADDRESS. 



SUBJECT: 



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rau FEBRUARY 22, 1867 



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C' WASHINGTON: 
PRINTED AT THE GLOBE OFFICE. 

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Washington, March 7, 1867. 
Dear Sir: 

We have the honor, in behalf of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants 
of the District of Columbia, to request that you will furnish us with a copy of your 
interesting and patriotic Address, delivered before the Society on the 22d ultimo, 
for publication. 

With great respect, 

We are, your obedient servants, 

JOHN B. BLAKE, 

A. McDonald davis, 

JOHN CARROLL BRENT, 
Committee of Arrangements. 
Col. J. C. Pickett, 

Present. 



Washington, March 8, 1867. 
Gentlemen : 

I have received your note of yesterday, in which you request me to furnish 

for publication a copy of the Address delivered before the Association of the Oldest 

Inhabitants of the District of Columbia on the 22d ultimo. In compliance with your 

request, I inclose herewith a copy of the Address. 

With the highest respect and regard. 

Your obedient servant, 

J. C. PICKETT. 

Dr. John B. Blake, -» 

Dr. A. McD. Davis, 

John Carroll Brent, Esq., 

Committee of Arrangements. 



ADDRESS. 



Fellow-Citizens : 

It is a very natural, and not either an illiberal or an idle curiosity, 
but one inherent apparently in the minds of individuals and of com- 
munities, to endeavor to ascertain the origin, pedigree, and important 
actions of illustrious men. Among such men General George Wash- 
ington occupies a conspicuous place, not only in his own country, but 
in all the countries of Christendom, and beyond. During the last 
eighty years inquiries and researches have been made, and not unsuc- 
cessfully, respecting the Washington family ; and it is a little singular 
that these researches were commenced in England and by a British 
subject. In the year 1792 a letter was addressed to General Wash- 
ington, by Sir Isaac Heard, in London^ who held the heraldic office 
of Garter King-at-Arms, desiring information relating to the Wash- 
ington family. This the General gave, although it did not amount to 
much, he confessing that it was a subject to which lie "had paid' very 
little attention," notwithstanding the luster he had recently shed 
upon that family, which had been a most respectable one for five or 
six centuries; of the class called gentry in England. In this country, 
thanks to our institutions, we have but one class — the people. 

It appears that the founder of the Washington family, the ancestor 
of all of that name in America at least, was William de Hertburn, 
who lived in the twelfth century. He acquired by purchase, in 1183, 
the manor and village of Wessyngton^ in the diocese of Durham. 
Wessyngton was, it may be supposed, its original name. AVilliam 
was then a Norman and not an English name, and this ma,y favor the 
hypothesis that his ancestor came into England with the Conqueror, 
in 1066. Hertburn dropped his own name, and assumed that of Wil- 
liam De Wessyngton. Wessyngton is said to signify smiling ivater. 
Surnames were then rare or unknown, as they now exist, and the 
owners and lords of manors usually took that of the manor. The 
seigniorial and proprietary prefix de was dropped, and Wessyngton 
finally became Washington ; the process of transmutation being about 
this: De Wessyngton, Wessyngton, Wessington, Weshington, Was- 
sington, Waashington, Washington. It has been stationary in this 
last form some hundreds of years, which will be retained as long, 



•4 

probably, as the name is pronounced among men, and that will be as 
long as any name of man is pronounced, we may suppose. This final 
change of the name was made, perhaps, not less than three hundred 
years ago, as the Washingtons have long been well known in Eng- 
land, and some of them have been very distinguished men. Sir Henry 
Washington achieved an honorable military reputation, fighting on 
the side of King Charles against the Parliament. In the year 1538 
the manor of Sulgrave was granted to Lawrence Washington, of Gray's 
Inn, London. His grandson. Sir John, had many children, and 
among them John and Lawrence, the first having been knighted by 
James the First. These two brothers emigrated to this country about 
the year 1659, the cause of their emigration being, Mr. Everett says, 
dissatisfaction with Cromwell's government. They came to Virginia, 
and settled in the county of Westmoreland, purchasing extensive 
landed estates; and some of the land they purchased is yet owned 
by their descendants. General Washington was the great-grandson 
of the immigrant John. The immigrant Lawrence had numerous 
descendants, some of them distinguished men. Colonel William 
Washington, so celebrated as a cavalry officer in the war of the Eevo- 
lution, was one of them. Lund Washington, the General's agent, in 
whom he had unbounded confidence, was another ; also Colonel John 
Washington, distinguished as an artillery officer in the war with 
Mexico, 1846-47. Peter G.Washington, Esq. , amember of our Society, 
is also a lineal descendant of the first Lawrence. 

This brief statement is enough for a very brief address, and is suffi- 
cient to give a general idea of General Washington's family. What 
I have stated is I believe accurate. I have not given any, loose and 
unsupported conjectures, nothing vaguely traditional, and nothing 
legendary and unauthentic. Errors have been committed by General 
Washington's ablest biographers. Mr. Sparks says that the only evi- 
dence of consanguinity between the first John and the first Lawrence 
was the name, a strange mistake for that industrious and conscientious 
writer to have committed. Mr. Irving calls the first Lawrence 
Andreio, a very unaccountable misnomer, but a mere oversight, and of 
but little importance. It may be inferred from all the genealogical 
researches that in this country at least every genuine and ho7ia Jide 
Washington has for his ancestor William de Hertburn, and is of the 
blood of the Fatlier of his Country. This is the result as it has been 
laboriously and patiently worked out by heralds, historians, and anti- 
quaries. Schrceder's ''Life and Times of Washington" being the 
latest work of the kind is, perhaps, with respect to the early history 
of the Washington family the most reliable. 

General Washington was born in Westmoreland county, Virginia, 



February 22, 1732. His father was Augustine, son of Lawrence, and 
grandson of the first John. His mother was Mary Ball, a daughter 
of a most respectable Virginia family. She was a lady of great merit, 
of many virtues, and of superior good sense. She did not marry a sec- 
ond time, and by her tact, her vigilance, and her prudence supplied 
admirably the place of fitlier to her son. It was at one time settled 
that 3^oung George should enter the British navy as a midshipman, 
under the auspices of Admiral Vernon, who was the friend of his 
oldest brother Lawrence, his father's son by his first wife, who had 
served under the Admiral and General Wentworth at Carthagena, in 
South America ; but his mother opposed the project, and it was aban- 
doned. It is needless to speculate much upon the dispositions of Prov- 
idence, about which it is impossible to know anything without a reve- 
lation, and about which it is easy to imagine everything ; but still I 
somewhat persuade myself that she had been made an instrument for 
reserving her son for a much higher destiny, for the achievement of 
great actions that were to unite his name indissolubly with the inde- 
pendence and greatness of his country; not that I assume, however, 
that without him its independence could not have been achieved. I 
believe it could have been, and if not in 1781 in less than forty years 
afterwards. It will not be doing injustice though to the eminent, 
devoted, and patriotic men of whom he was the associate and coworker 
in the great cause, to say that he was first in the Cabinet, first in the 
field, and first in the confidence of the public. I am not now imitat- 
ing the famous sentence, not by me to be imitated, " First in war, 
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens," 

Under the superintendence of his wise, excellent, and afi'ectionate 
mother Washington received a sound, plain English education, and 
no more, the one best adapted it may be for those who are born to be 
great actors and achievers on the world's wide theater. Very few 
great scholars have been great warriors, great statesmen, or great 
sovereigns. It may be because they prefer academic shades and scien- 
tific pursuits to all the glories of the Senate, of the forum, or of the 
''tented field," and in this they may have been wise. It is pleasant 
to recollect that in his youth Washington essayed poetry as well as 
prosC;, though to the first he gave but little of his time or thoughts 
probably. He had a greater work before him than "to build the lofty 
rhyme," which was to deliver his country from British tyranny, and 
with his glorious and never to be forgotten coadjutors to lay the 
foundations of a great empire. 

In 1752 Washington was sent by the Governor of Virginia (Din- 
widdle) as commissioner to the commander of the French troops that 
had penetrated the British territory from Canada, being instructed to 



remonstrate against tlie proceeding and to gather all tlie information 
he could. This duty he performed in a very satisfactory manner. He 
found a French officer at a post fifteen miles from Lake Erie, who 
treated him courteously, but gave him no clue to the intentions of his 
chief in Canada; refused to retire with his troops, saying that it was not 
his business to expound or to discuss treaties, but to obey the orders of 
his superior, the Marquis Du Quesne. It required forty-one days of 
laborious traveling for Washington to reach a poiiit about five hundred 
and sixty miles from Williamsburg, Virginia ; a point that might now 
be reached in two days, such are the present facilities for traveling. 

In 1754 Washington was dispatched, with the rank of Colonel, to ' 
the western frontier, with a few hundred men, to repel any attempt of 
the French to penetrate into Virginia. He had just troops enough to 
make a show of war and to provoke it, but not enough to insure suc- 
cess. This expedition resulted in the battle of the Great Meadows, 
and the capitulation of Fort Necessity, which was more properly a con- 
vention; but the historians and biographers started with the wrong 
word, and it is now too late to displace it for the proper one. It is a 
capitulation when an army surrenders and becomes prisoners of war — 
a convention when there is no surrender and no prisoners. Instead 
of becoming prisoners Washington's soldiers left the fort with all the 
honors of war, and all the stores, except what they abandoned for want 
of means of transporting them. The surrender of the French Gen- 
eral Dupont and his army to the Spaniards, in 1808, was a capitula- 
tion; Marshal Junot's agreement to evacuate Portugal, in the same 
year, with all his force, was a convention, there being no prisoners. 

Washington acquired much experience of military matters in these 
expeditions, and came to be regarded as the first military man in the 
province, which he undoubtedly was. He soon joined the army com- 
manded by General Braddock, and was present at his defeat near Fort 
Du Quesne, (Pittsburg.) He gave the General good advice, which was 
disregarded. Had it been followed a victory would have been won 
instead of a disastrous defeat being sustained. Braddock was brave, 
and a good officer, but vain, self-confident, and inaccessible to good 
counsel, particularly when the counselor was a provincial — a buck- 
skin, as he regarded Washington. 

Washington was soon appointed commander-in-chief of the Vir- 
ginia forces, and commanded an expedition that was sent to the West ; 
but being merely for defensive purposes no battles were fought and 
no laurels gained. In his twenty-fourth year he accompanied General 
Forbes, who was sent to capture Fort Du Quesne, a duty that was per- 
formed with very little loss ; and hostilities being apparently at an 
end he returned to Virginia, resigned his military commission, and 



dedicated himself to the pursuits of private life. In 1Y58 he married 
the widow Custis. She was young, beautiful, and attractive, and the 
mistress of what was then a very large fortune, but in these extraor- 
dinary times not large at all, when wealth is counted, not by millions 
only, but by tens and scores of millions. It is to be hoped that all 
this vast opulence rests upon a solid foundation, but I am sometimes a 
little apprehensive that there is a flaw somewhere, and that a portion 
of it may, at some not very distant day, be dispersed into thin air. 
May this not happen ! 

Washington now resided on his estate of Mount Vernon, to the cul- 
tivation of which he gave the most assiduous attention, yet serving 
frequently as a member of the House of Burgesses, and also as a ves- 
tryman of his parish. Whatever he undertook to perform he per- 
formed always promptly, punctually, and well — a small office as well 
as a great one. In whatever situation he might be placed he was 
always found to be equal to it. If deficient in the requisite knowledge 
at the start, which he rarely was, if ever, he soon acquired it, and 
soon came to know more than almost any other person. So it was in 
the Burgesses, and so it was everywhere. He must have learned with 
ease, or he could not have learned so much. His mode of life at Mount 
Yernon was the happiest known to man, probably, and he made the 
best and the most of it. He had much intercourse with his neighbors 
and friends, entertained many visitors, and entertained them hospita- 
bly, but without parade or ostentation. As a legislator he was 
remarkable for his information and for his solid judgment, which com- 
manded the respect and esteem of his colegislators. His political bias 
was by no means of a strong Anglican tendency. His opinions, pur- 
suits, and associations prepared him to be naturally and inevitably, 
when time came for taking sides, hostile to the British policy, which 
was, in a few words, to conjure out of the provincial treasuries every 
penny that could be conjured by the ministerial magicians at London, 
and they wielded the magic wand with no little dexterity. But after 
all they were but short-sighted conjurers, as they themselves lived to 
see. They had the golden goose, but they could not be satisfied with 
a golden eg^ every day ; so they put all to hazard and lost all. 

But Washington, whilst giving himself up to agriculture, and to the 
cultivation of the amenities of social life, was, notwithstanding, a con- 
stant and a vigilant observer of everything of public concernment. He 
was always ready to accept any charge or to perform any duty that 
might be assigned him, if calculated to promote the j)ublic welfare. 
This useful and improving kind of life he pursued many years, and 
came thus to be, whilst yet a young man, the most capable, efficient, 
and influential person in all the thirteen Provinces. And he is an 



example of. the kind of man that may be produced by a great share 
of good sense and prudence, united with untiring industry, watchful 
vigilance, and exalted patriotism. 

In the year 1760 the relations between the British Provinces and 
the Home Government were of a very delicate character, and nothing 
but the most skillful handling could effect a peaceable solution of the 
various questions and difficulties pending. These difficulties increased, 
and the crisis became difficult and ominous. Two conventions met in 
Virginia, and Washington was a member of both. He and George 
Mason framed jointly a set of resolutions, remarkable as being a clear 
and luminous exposition of the points at issue between the mother 
country and the Provinces. They were the work of both. Mason being 
the draughtsman, without doubt. 

Washington was now fairly arrayed in opposition to the British pre- 
tensions, and was elected a member of the Continental Congress with 
Patrick Henry and three others, whose names are well known in Amer- 
ican history for their patriotic labors. In Congress his ability and 
firmness soon became manifest, though little given to making speeches, 
for which he seemed to have an aversion. He worked with the head 
and with the hand ; the tongue work he left to able and eloquent men, 
who were more at home than he in that speciality. Here it was that 
Patrick Henry made that memorable reply to the question: Who 
is the greatest man in Congress ! He answered: "If you speak of 
eloquence, Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, is by far the greatest 
orator, but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, 
Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest. 

In 1775 the Second Congress assembled, of which Washington was 
a member. By this body he was unanimously chosen commander-in- 
chief of the Continental army, and it was a little remarkable that of 
all the members none were more earnest in their support of him than 
those from New England. Happy era, that ! Sectional differences and 
geographical lines had not yet made us a divided, jealous, and discon- 
tented people. Patriotism and devotedness to the country's interest 
were not then determined by degrees of latitude and longitude. Truly 
then there was no North, no South, but a united population, animated 
by one thought, one soul, one ambition, one interest, one object. On 
his election Washington gave notice that he did not accept the high 
office conferred on him for its emoluments, and that he would receive 
no compensation for his services beyond his expenses, and he kept his 
word. He was certainly the first commander-in-chief of armies in 
modern times, I suppose, who accepted the command, stipulating similar 
conditions. He rendered an account finally of his expenses, kept with 
his own hand, and in an exact and circumstantial manner. And surely 



liis expenses amounted to a very moderate sum, considering liis eminent 
position, and that he was about seven or eight years in the public ser- 
vice. But he practiced the same judicious economy when commanding 
the whole military force of the country, even when quasi-dictator^ that 
he practiced in his own private affairs. He did not forget, in all his 
greatness, when exercising supreme authority, how the money he 
expended was raised — by severely taxing a people then ill-able to bear 
taxation. They paid, or if sometimes recalcitrant it was because of their 
poverty, not of their will. 

General Washington soon found, if he did not know it from the 
beginning, that he had accepted an office of all others the most diffi- 
cult to discharge effectively, or to discharge satisfactorily, and, under 
the circAnstances, one that was inconceivably embarrassing. He was 
commander-in-chief, but where were his armies ? They had to be 
formed, and when and where there was a scarcity, if not absence, of 
almost all the elements essential to the organization of armies. There 
were men, but not enough of them ; they were, in general, without 
military experience, and their previous habits of life were not favor- 
able to the construction of -^hat the Duke of Wellington called a 
"perfect machine," meaning a perfectly disciplined army, as his was, 
he said, that he marched in 1814 from Spain into France. They 
were brave and patriotic, but averse to long periods of service. Short 
enlistments were then, and have since ever been, the weak point of our 
military system. Of this General Washington complained often 
enough and emphatically enough to have produced a change for the 
better, but he could not accomplish much. The difficulty was not with 
the Congress, but was to be found in the ideas, in the habits, and in 
the pursuits of the people. Not only were soldiers wanting, but arms 
were wanting, munitions of war, clothing, and last, though not least, 
that indispensable nerf de la guerre — money. There was no quarter- 
master department, no commissariat, no medical staff, none that really 
deserved these names. Never before, perhaps^ did any nation, in 
modern times, rush into a war with a powerful adversary, oppressed 
with so copious a "negative catalogue," as Dr. Johnson called the 
absence of all things needful. Had the want of all these things been 
only temporary and removable it had been well. But it was not so. 
It existed, chronically, from the beginning of the war to the end of it, 
nor could Washington, with all his power, his influence, his strong 
will, his energy, and his heart-stirring appeals ever succeed in con- 
structing a perfect machine in the sense of the " Iron Duke." Why 
was this so ? Were the people pusillanimous or disaffected, or indiffer- 
ent? No ; not by any means, as a rule. There were disloyalists, but 
not enough to vitiate the whole loaf — the whole body popular and 



* 10 ' 

j)olitic. The secret, if it were a secret, was tliat the people were gen- 
erally poor, and, though brave and patriotic, did not possess the mil- 
itary instincts ascribed to the French. Then the government, the 
form of it, I mean, was not one of the best for carrying on a war. -It 
existed but by the consent of thirteen distinct provincial governments ; 
had but little power, little consideration, and no prestige. Besides, 
the population was small, and scattered over a vast extent of country. 
The great distance between States and cities, the want of roads, which 
could scarcely be said to exist during the war, and long afterwards, 
were insurmountable obstacles in the way of collecting supplies and 
transporting them to the points where they were needed, and of con- 
centrating troops rapidly. Had they been no better during the late 
war the struggle might have lasted twenty years. For the ^lirteen 
colonies, without a central government, without strength except in 
opinion, without armies, and without money, or with but little of it, 
to throw down the gauntlet to a powerful nation, the mistress of the 
seas, the ravager of India, and the terror of half the world, was an 
act of patriotic spirit and daring but seldom paralleled. 

To give, in a brief a5.dress, a sketch that might be in some degree 
satisfactory of the revolutionary war is simply impossible. Nor is 
it necessary. You are all familiar, more or less, with the principal 
events, the strategic plans and combinations, the successes, the failures, 
and the part borne in it by General Washington. He was the soul of 
everything, animated everything, and looked to almost everything. 
He fought many battles — was sometimes victorious and sometimes 
defeated, but never so utterly that defeat became disaster, great enough 
to shake his resolution, to drive him into despondency, or make him 
bate a jot of heart or hope. Such was the confidence universally 
reposed in him that Congress invested him with quasi-dictatorial powers 
for a limited term, although there was a strong prejudice in the minds 
of the people against military dictators, as was right ; but they were 
willing to trust him, the only military man they would have trusted 
so far, though not the only one worthy of trust by many. Never 
surely did a dictator act less dictatorially than he. With infinite 
reluctance did he do anything, or order anything to be done, for which , 
there was not law or overwhelming necessity, or palpable expediency. 
He neither abused his powers nor suffered others to act tyrannically 
and oppressively in his name. The great prerogative and protective 
writ of Habeas Corpus has been in existence almost two hundred years, 
and was the law of the land when the Continental Congress suspended- 
it, if it was suspended ; and when General Washington might have 
filled the prisons with suspects — suspected of disloyalty and of sym- 
pathizing witTi the royalists. There were more than enough of these^ 



11 

and multitudinous arrests miglit have been made with colorable cause — 
yet few were made. There was no persecution, no oppression, because 
the supreme power was in the hands of a just and law-reverencing man. 
And thus General Wasliington deserved as much laudation for what 
he did not do as for what he did. With him the liberty of the citizen 
was as inviolate when he was commanding thirty or forty thousand 
soldiers, whose duty it was to execute his orders implicitly, be they 
just or unjust, as it was Avhen civil chief of the country — it was his 
duty to protect every citizen in his rights. We read of many dic- 
tators, but of none so undictatorial as this. When he laid down the 
dictatorship he felt, not like a man giving up power and authority, 
but as one relieved from an onerous and disagreeable responsibility. 

Though omitting any remarks about General Washington's plans' 
and campaigns and battles during the war, I cannot forbear saying a 
few words about Valley Forge — '.words familiar to all your ears. None 
of you, I imagine, however extensive your military or historic reading 
may have been, have met with anything more sickening and heart- 
rending than the details of the sufferings of General Washington's 
army at that encampment, during the winter of 1777-78. I might 
except properly, perhaps, the retreat of the French from Moscow in 
the winter of 1812, when the freezing fugitives used the bodies of their 
dead comrades for fuel to keep up their camp fires ; nor did they do 
this from insensibility or from brutality, but from extremity of suffer- 
ing. The ten thousand Greeks, in the famous Anabasis of Xenophon, 
from Persia through Armenia to the Black Sea, suffered much ; not 
as much, though, as the French -did, nor as much as AVashington's 
army at Valley Forge, where there was the most unheard-of destitu- 
tion — want of everything that could be regarded as necessary to a sol- 
dier's comfort — his existence almost. In my youth I conversed fre- 
quently with an old soldier who passed that winter at the Forge, and 
when through his narrative, I said I could not see how they endured 
so much, and rather wondered that the troops had not broken up and 
dispersed — not deserting — until better times. He said that what pre- 
vented them from doing so was the authority and influence of Wash- 
ington and the cause in which they were engaged ; and that they 
would have suffered still more for that cause. But notwithstanding 
their terrible sufferings the troops were not demoralized, and as a rule 
were faithful to th^ir engagements. Here we see what a good cause 
can do. It inspires the soul, strengthens the arm, fortifies the heart, 
and enables a patriot soldier to bear more hardship than the human 
system was constructed to bear. Faithful and glorious soldiers ! They 
suffered much, but they had their reward. They lived — the most of 
them — to see themselves and their country free, and those who fell 



12 

found a reward surpassing far in value all that human justice and 
human gratitude can bestow. 

In 1*781 Cornwallis was captured with his army at Yorktown, and 
with this brilliant finale closed the war. The campaign which led to 
this crowning success, planned by Washington and La Fayette and 
Counts Rochambeau and De Grasse, was as admirably conducted as it 
was admirably planned. History does not mention, I believe, any 
military event brought about by superior strategic ability, or finally 
achieved in a more heroic manner. Peace followed the capture ; and 
here I must quote four lines from a British poet. Dr. Darwin. He 
sings like an American patriot : 

" With patriot speed the quick contagion ran, 
Hill lighted hill and man electrized man ; 
Her heroes slain, awhile Columbia mourn'd. 
And crown' d with laurels Liberty return' d." 

The independence of the thirteen American colonies was acknowl- 
edged by George the Third with a tolerably good grace, seeing that he 
was an obstinate and impracticable man. He said to Mr. Adams, who 
was the first American minister sent to the Court of St. James, that 
he was the last to consent to the dismemberment of the British empire, 
but that he would be the first faithfully to observe the treaty of peace. 

General Washington having lived to seethe accomplishment of, and 
in a great measure to accomplish, that which had induced him to take 
up arms, resigned his commission and retired to Mount Vernon, which 
he had visited but once in six or seven years. Having turned his 
weapons of war into agricultural implements, he resumed with much 
alacrity his former civil pursuits. He had had much experience of 
war, but it was not a profession that he had now in his mature years 
any predilection for, although in his youth when he first heard the 
whistling of hostile bullets he had said that it was music to his ear. 
Being asked after he had heard a good deal of that music if he had 
said so, he replied that if he had it was when he was young, thus 
admitting and retracting, apparently. 

At Mount Vernon Washington led the same quiet, happy, and 
industrious life he had led in former times. There he resided, 
having reached the age of fifty, an age beyond the age of adventure 
and romance, but young enough for enjoyment of life and for its 
active pursuits. His occupations were, superintending his farms, 
corresponding with his army friends_, receiving visits, and dispensing a 
liberal hospitality ; enjoying, as a fine poet sings, 

"The mild majesty of private life, 
Where honor's hands efifuse unenvied treasures, 
And the snowy wings of innocence and peace 
Protect the scene." 



13 

* In 1787 lie was a member of the Convention which met to form a 
Constitution for ''the people of the United States." It was formed, 
and was not long afterwards amended, and may again be ; for 
although, perhaps, the best document of the kind then ever conceived 
by the mind and heart of man, yet it is not perfect, and being the 
work of fallible men may never be ; still, although the framers of it 
were fallible as being human and finite beings, they were perfect in 
patriotism, in political integrity, and in good intentions. He was 
ejected first President of the United States, and having served the 
term of four years was reelected without opposition, and could have 
been a third time, but this he peremptorily declined ; thus giving an 
example seldom given by men in exalted stations, of retiring volun- 
tarily from public life, which he did partly because he was tired of it, 
and partly to give an example to his successors of being satisfied with 
two terms ; and so cogent were his reasons for this, and such the force 
and influence of his opinions, that no other President if he desired a 
third term has ever expressed the wish to have it. And so the exam- 
ple of the first President has been thus far as much respected as though 
it were a provision of the Constitution, as it should be, or better still, 
one term only for one man during his whole life. Could Washington 
have seen the shadoius of coming events, I have no doubt he would have 
declined a second term. 

For some time after the close of the war it was considered not to 
be bad taste in England to vilify Greneral Washington. Among his 
revilers was a lady possessing considerable poetical powers, which she 
employed on a work that she called a Monody on the Death of Major 
Andre, who was hung in the year 1780 as a spy, as every one knows, 
he being an accomplice and coadjutor of the traitor Arnold. The worst 
man escaped, the better was punished. I read the poem fifty or sixtj 
years ago, and recollect a few of the lines. I quote them : 

" For infamy with livid hand shall shed 

Eternal mildews o'er his ruthless head." 
***** 

" Cowards only know 
Persisting vengeance o'er a fair n foe." 

The ''ruthless head" was Washington's. He was the '' coward," 
too; Andre the "fall'nfoe." Grave English historians have repre- 
sented the execution of Andre to be a foul murder. But this venom 
and virulence soon wore themselves out, and the poets of the Billings- 
gate school rested from their labors, which soon ceasing to pay they 
ceased to sing. That pure, high-minded, honorable, and chivalrous 
man. La Fayette, came in for a share of the vituperation heaped upon 
General Washington's head. This was because he was a Frenchman, 



f4 

which was a very good English reason in that day for any amount of 
vilification. This is all changed, and was changed long ago. No 
one now speaks in England even but with respect of those two illus- 
trious men, and many venerate their memories and eulogize them. 

It is known to everybody that General Washington selected the site 
of this city under an act of Congress passed 1790, and that he super- 
intended the surveying of it and laying it out. This duty he performed 
as he performed all others, punctually and conscientiously. One of 
our members, Mr. Wells, was of the surveying party acting under the 
orders of the General. This city has long enjoyed the sobriquet of the 
"city of magnificent distances." Since these distances having been 
filling up rapidly within the last five or six years I have not often 
heard the sobriquet. It has been objected to, the plan of the city, that 
the avenues and streets are too wide, thus making it very expensive to 
pave them. They seem wide now, but will not be too wide a quarter 
of a century hence. They are the better for their width, thus promoting 
the circulation of the air and contributing to the healthfulness of the 
city ; and the money expended in paving is really and eff'ectively an 
expenditure for sanitary purposes and precautions. Edmund Burke 
said long ago that the squares and open places of London were its lungs ; 
a truth with which all Londoners are conversant, and there they only 
regret that the streets are not wider than they are. In all great cities 
they are too narrow, as they well know in all the old capitals of 
Europe, and as they begin to find out in New York and some other of 
our cities. 

In his final retirement to Mount Vernon General Washington applied 
himself sedulously and con amove to agricultural avocations. He aimed 
at improving the agriculture of his native State, which then much 
needed improvement. In those days of dull routine there was no deep 
plowing with patent plows, no systematic rotation of crops. Chemis- 
try had not then given a helping hand to the agriculturist ; it was but 
in its infancy itself. There were then no Liebegs and other chemico- 
agricultural writers and experimenters. There were then no reaping 
and mowing machines, and indeed scarcely one of the now numerous 
appliances and auxiliaries to mere human and horse and ox labor. 
Washington corresponded freely with persons, engaged, like himself, 
in ameliorating the art of cultivating the soil. Among his correspond- 
ents were Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair, enlightened and 
public-spirited Englishmen, engaged in endeavoring, like him, to 
make two blades of grass grow where but one blade grew before. 

As General Washington had ever led a temperate, prudent, and 
active life, it might have been rationally supposed that he would have 
attained to an advanced age, as some of his successors have done — the 



15 

t^o Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson. But Providence had 
disposed differently. Whilst visiting some of his farms in December, 
1799, he was caught in a fall of snow and sleet, whicli caused inflamma- 
tion of the throat, for which skillful physicians could do notliing, and 
on the 14th of that month he breathed his last. I well remember his 
death — I was then in Kentucky — and well remember, too, with what 
unmistakable manifestations of the profoundest grief the intelligence 
was received. At first the news was discredited, but ''final hope 
became at last flat despair." Honors were paid to his memory, such 
as the times and circumstances could afford. There were no gorgeous 
trappings and gilded canopies, or plumed hearses, or "windy suspira- 
tion of forced breath," or the "trappings and the suits of woe;" but 
there were suffused eyes and mourning hearts, and in the faces of the 
people it might be read that the Father of his Country was no more. 

Whilst Washington was in the full enjoyment of the kind of life 
lie most loved, a rural one, and practical farming, he was prevailed 
upon by President Adams to accept the command of a provisional 
army to be raised to meet any contingency of foreign war or of domes- 
tic troubles. His rule having always been not to seek ofiices or to 
refuse them when he could serve his country, he accepted again the 
office of commander-in-chief, with the rank of Lieutenant General; 
but, fortunately for the country, it was not necessary for him to take 
the field. Devoted to peace as he was, he thought, as Pliny did, that 
war might be necessary, and was neither to be feared nor provoked. 

When Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor of Germany, in 
the thirteenth century, the electors gave as a reason for choosing him 
that he was "just and good, and beloved of God and men;" just the 
reason that those who elected Washington to the highest office within 
the gift of the people might have assigned for their choice five hun- 
dred years after it had been applied to another great man. 

Robertson, the historian, said of the elder Pitt, "The Secretary 
stood alone; modern degeneracy had not reached him." It cannot be 
said that General Washington "stood alone," seeing how numerous 
were the able and patriotic men who had acted with him in council 
and in the field, and whom he always regarded as his copatriots and 
comrades. But degeneracy had not reached him, and, secure in his 
invulnerable integrity, he was beyond its reach. 

Washington's Farewell Address to his countrymen is a noble legacy. 
He cautions them against the baneful effect of the spirit of party gen- 
erally ; tells them that one method of assault against the Constitution 
might be through alterations, which will impair the energy of the sys- 
tem. He warns against factions and factious men ; he exhorts us to 
cherish public credit as a source of strength and security ; to cultivate 



• 16 

peace and. liarmony with all ; supposes that a nation's felicity is in 
ratio with its virtue, hut fears that national vices may he too strong. 

I need say no more ahout the Address. We all know its value and 
the wisdom that dictated it, .as well as the love of country of him from 
whom it emanated. It is hetter understood, I fear, and more admired 
than it has heen observed. 

There has lived no mortal, whose name is historical, that will be 
heard of in future, and in all future ages, oftener than General Wash- 
ington's. In Europe and in South America his name is the greatest 
known. In the latter he is regarded as the great liberator — libertador 
— of the North, and they hold him in the highest veneration, although 
they cannot pronounce his name, Vasintone being the nearest they can 
some to it. In less than two hundred years, among three hundred 
millions of people of Anglo-Saxon origin, his name will be a daily and 
a household word. This must be so, and nothing but the will of God 
that it shall not be can prevent it. The territory is here, the people 
are here, and will come. We have a free press and free institutions 
that cannot be destroyed even by armed despotism itself. We have 
the industry, the energy, the enterprise, the science, and the inge- 
nuity. Wars and rebellions, and dismemberment even, cannot pre- 
vent this glorious consummation. Let none doubt. The population 
of the United States has doubled itself about three and a half times 
within about ninety years. Why, then, may it not double itself three 
times in two hundred years ? Statistical tables show that this may be 
done. Circumstances indicate that it will be done — Deofavente. 

In conclusion, I will remark, that it seems to me pertinent to say 
that lookin.g recently over the records of the Washington National 
Monument Society I observed a letter from the Secretary of the Villa 
Rica (Georgia) Masonic Lodge, requesting that some Monument engrav- 
ings might be sent to him, which were supplied by John Carroll 
Brent, Secretary of the Monument Society, The Secretary of the 
Lodge in his reply returns thanks for the engravings, and says 
that "the sentiments of the letter from the Washington correspondent 
(Mr. Brent) meet a cordial response in their bosoms, and we earnestly 
trust that the good day is not far distant when we shall all meet as 
brothers of the same family, never, no never, again to meet in deadly 
strife." 

It does not seem to me to be inappropriate now to reproduce these 
sentiments for imitation and approval, for, although they are not per 
se of any very impressive moment, still, as a precursory sign and 
symptom, they may have no small significance and vali 



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